Reality Game
by Ushinatta Neko
Summary: When you're an anti-social computer nerd, being together with a group of 'normal' people while in a unnatural-creatures-apocalypse is not good. Especially if you're the backstabbing kind who will do everything to get rid of them. Miku's both. \"This is a game brought into reality, and a reality brought into a game."/ Language warning.
1. Checkpoint 1

**Back from hiatus with a new story! :D Got this idea from a strange dream I had…(Don't ask. Please. Don't.) And basically, the first chapter is what….kind of….really happened in my dream…Well, I've always wanted to try writing action stuff and yeah~ =w=**

**Disclaimer: I own only my dream. **

* * *

Broken bedframe.

Ripped sheets.

Goose feathers everywhere.

_Eight minutes. _

Mikuo.

The never-ending blue sky.

* * *

Her fingers tap deftly on the keyboard, nimble digits flying over the keys, making tiny but sharp and clear 'clicks'. Miku takes a swig from the soda can next to her laptop and miss-places it and curses ("Dammit.") when the whole fizzy liquid spills _over her laptop. _She hurriedly shoves the can away from the fizzy soda mess and her poor laptop and glares at the culprit (soda can, that is) — not that it helps or anything. The can merely stares innocently back, the large _Diet Coke _wordings annoying her. Her laptop fizzes (she stares at her still fizzling soda inside the can) and flickers (like the stars in the night sky) and blacks out (the fault is by yours truly), leaving her Facebook posts unread and unanswered and a very, very slow browser.

Miku slaps her hands into her face and groans. It's already the third time this shitty week, and her parents had already warned her not to do that again, after bringing her laptop to the best technician in town just a mere two days ago. Two days ago which seemed like eternity's eternity's eternity's eternity's...and so on. Miku can imagine what would happen if she tells them — basically, a slow, cruel death enhanced by the sneering of that stupid piece of shit being that doesn't even deserve to be called her older brother.

A small but distinct 'beep' from her laptop gains her attention before Miku can go down that train of thought about her idiotic brother who deserved to die a painful death. Miku swivels around first, her spine contorting backwards and her hands clasping together, muttering a short prayer to wish that her laptop's safe and that just for once, her jinx works. Then she swivels back and her hopeful face falls desperately into a black void when Miku sees that it's just a lame pop-up, nothing more. Then she reminds herself that even though it's just a pop-up, it means that her laptop's safe. Kind of. It should be.

Still, she doesn't care about the pop-up — it's just a lame pop-up. But the constant beeping starts to annoy her and eventually Miku gives in and starts reading. "What ability would you like to have in the event of a zombie apocalypse?" Miku stares in shock and disgust at the fucking stupid question. "What the hell? As if there's ever going to be such a ridiculous thing."

Zombies are fucking undead, and there's certainly no way that dead people could rise up from the ground in the dead of the night, sliding around in their rotting and crumbling bare green feet, breath reeking of death and stink and bugs and diseases, and attacking people in hordes like fucking crazy bees attracted to a single flower or something, no matter how many science-fiction and horror and drama movies Miku's watched. She would rather believe in tree octopuses than such ridiculous occult shit. (And by the way, tree octopuses are so obviously fake.)

The tealette moves her mouse to close the window, but finds that it's impossible, for there are no 'x' buttons. She smashes her face into the table again, not caring if her glasses are askew, or that her nose's flattened, or that she looks like one of those drunkards out in the streets sulking against shop windows, because she _is _sulking after all, just that she's _not _drunk, no matter how much she wishes that she is and that this whole thing is hallucinated from her stupidly buzzed brain.

The constant beeping's increased in intensity and driving her crazy now, sounding like an angry swarm of beeping bees (which actually doesn't exist but _oh, who gives a damn?_). Miku supposes that the creator of this stupid pop-up's showing his or her fury for her lack of activity, and the girl smirks to the table, proud that she managed to incur the wrath of a certain unknown person. Her ability to madden people's improved, and Miku's realization of this lightens her hearts and lifts her mood and she's so happy and cheerful that she does a little jig in her heart and actually _lifts _her head to answer the question. Her hands hover above the keyboard for a fraction of a second and then types away with an answer in her mind. "Flying." Miku reads it over after the word's been typed, and nods in satisfaction, clicking the 'submit' button.

Very soon, a shocking announcement comes back. "Congratulations! You have been selected!" Miku reads it aloud, and curses, "What the freaking hell is with this shitty pop-up? 'Selected'? Don't play jokes on me like I'm a kid, fucking stupid idiotic shitty person. Nonsense." Her mood drops quicker than a shooting star falling to earth, though not as starry and fabulous and hot as a star, of course. It's more dark and moody and chilly then anything else in the world. Even more than the seawaters in the Marina trench.

Miku spins her chair around in anguish and annoyance, comes to a stop in front of the wall mirror that hangs on her teal-colored wall and observes her reflection in the mirror out of boredom and a strange need to make herself feel even worse. Her dull teal hair is overly long and hangs down listlessly like shitty wet towels, and her emerald eyes (that totally does not sparkle like said gems) remains lifeless and hidden by a pair of thick plain glasses. She's too tall and lanky and _stick-thin _like she's a twig that's easily snapped by the wind. The tealette sighs and wonders if that's the reason guys avoid her like people avoid plague.

_Must be, _Miku thinks briefly. That kind of nerdy look will turn off any female trying to be friends with her, much less male mortals that have absolutely no idea what inner beauty is like. She doesn't get why people always, _always, _chase after those people with a beautiful face, before understanding clearly what their inner character is like (which, by the way, is mostly really ugly and disgusting like a four-hour-old carrot stew sick). Miku hasn't met a single person who actually cared to look past her outer shell and peek into her heart.

_This must be what it feels like to be stranded on an island shouting 'SOS' to every single ship sailing past, but no one takes notice of you and simply bypasses you. But well, I've adapted — I no longer have the want and need to get on one of those ships that'll sink in the Pacific Ocean with all the battering of the wind and sea waves anyway. _With a thump, Miku flops onto her bed back first and thinks dejectedly. She might grow into a weeping philosopher when she becomes old as hell at this rate of an amazing fifty rejections straight. _Ah, how boring..._Turning so that her side sinks into her bed, she stares at her window, where sunlight's flitting through like dancing butterflies in a grassy clearing.

"The sunlight from eight minutes before... Huh. I wonder what I'll be like eight minutes later? Probably dozing off or whatever shit." Her eyes dart to the numbers flashing with bright neon green. Thirteen zero-five. _Wow, how perfectly unlucky. Eight minutes later, it'll be thirteen-thirteen. _Miku stares up at the ceiling and ignores the growling protest of her stomach, threatening to start up a revolution and starts counting the number of stars the five-year-old her pasted on the ceiling in an attempt to turn her mind away from the thought of tantalizing food.

It works. Too well, in fact, that she _fucking falls asleep_.

A small creak wakes her and Miku bolts upright, her eyes shooting open and orbs frantically searching for her alarm clock. Thirteen-ten. Huh. Anyway, it's not good if it's her parents she hear — they'll massacre her if they find out that she's sleeping at such a late time of the day. _As if they don't already torture me, ha..._She snorts in contempt, temper flaring. She can never be patient; being inpatient's a trait and a habit and something that's so easily forgotten that Miku doesn't even remember that it's there, but it's _there, _always lurking around like a dark shadow in her heart.

Miku's eyes shoot to the doorway of her room and find Mikuo lurking there, mumbling to himself in incomprehensible words. She frowns; his hair is twenty or so shades too dark, almost black, and his pupils are contracting and expanding rapidly, so obvious that it's visible even from Miku's spot on her bed (which is, by the way, about two meters away from the door), and his skin's...greenish. Totally unnatural. Miku frowns.

"Mikuo, what are you do — effing shit!" With a feral growl and gnashing of canines, Mikuo leaps at her, his fingers out and nails digging sharp into her arm that Miku uses to defend her face out of instinct. Growling deeply, her brother raises his arms, tugging sharply at his embedded nails, leaving behind red spots dripping with scarlet blood. Miku winces at the painful action of simply lifting her defending arm and screams shrilly, rolling off her bed accidentally and landing on the floor with a loud thump, when he digs his arms into her bed, ripping apart the bed sheets and mattress. Goose feathers flies everywhere, imitating snow falling from the sky.

A sharp sting assaults her when Miku tries to roll underneath her bed (a safe haven, perhaps), travelling throughout her back, the pain like searing fire burning her back and tendrils of minus degree ice curling at her bones and muscles at the same time. "Fuck," Miku swears upon realizing that she'd probably got bruises, or, worst-case scenario, cracked some bones. She stares at the filthy underside of her bed as she slows her breath, trying to figure out _what the freaking hell _just happened. Tracing a spider web and the curious scuttling of a surprised spider, Miku grabbed her fringe in frustration.

That did _not _just happen. Her brother _did not just fucking attack her like a _— Miku's breath catches in horror and disbelief — _crazy undead. _Her tangled brain races back in time and finds the distinctive features of a zombie in her brother. The green skin. The strange nature of his eyes. And — she hadn't noticed before but — his rancid breath. Just as she realizes this, the wooden bed frame creaks and creaks and chips fly everywhere, dangerously close to her eyes, but said eyes' protected by her glasses. Miku lies still with bated breath, ears sharp and listening for signs of Mikuo.

The bed frame cracks and splits into two halves, light filtering through the crack and sides of the bed, and from the large crack, Miku sees her brother growling, drool dripping out of his mouth and the whites of his eyes an emperor yellow. He continues to mumble, but the words — or rather, noises — formed are truly guttural, and _it's then that _Miku's brain processes her thoughts and she realizes that _he's not human anymore. _Completely...one of the undead.

Her brother's a zombie now. A zombie with no fucking attitude and personality and speech and any other human qualities, with only a single command to eat brains and ignore all other body parts — that was her brother. No, Mikuo can't be called her brother now, not even a 'he', but an 'it' and just a nameless zombie, Miku decides, rolling out and away from the now-destroyed bed, before he — it (Miku reminds herself) could stick it's arm through her body and rip her brains out. It growls again, sticky drool all over the greenish skin and it's shirt.

The zombie slowly moves forward, and Miku mirrors the movement apprehensively, but backwards, head whipping around for escapes route but eyes never leaving the stinky undead. Her orbs flit to the window, but right away, her brain rejects the idea of jumping out of the window. It's impossible, what with this being the twelfth and highest floor and all, and besides, even if it is the second floor, Miku really doesn't want to break some more bones. If the window's the only option other than being eaten by the zombie, Miku will rather jump to her death than dying a gruesome death. But she still has a Choice C.

Miku eyes the hard wooden desk chair on her desk. She's being slowly backed to the wooden furniture anyway, so she makes a swipe for the chair and lifts it up and smashes the whole chair on the zombie's head, screaming a battle cry. The chair cracks into pieces — right away, Miku's reminded that people had always said that her brother's head was hard, but she quickly assures herself that the being in front of her is a brother no more, and that it is merely an undead pawn — leaving behind a dizzy zombie with a ruptured head showing off the flesh and a strange, disgusting green liquid practically pouring down the side of its head. She crinkles her nose in disgust and makes for the door before said zombie can regain its balance. And then, as an afterthought, she picks up her alarm clock since it's the only hard thing she has at her disposal, in case the zombie's a god or something and recovers really quickly. Then, she dashes for the doorway.

She's there, almost there, but — her parents appear suddenly in the doorway, blocking her route to escape and life, but she doesn't care, doesn't care because her life is more important, and Miku screams, ramming into them like a crazy elephant, and is blocked by her parents' arms, which cross over, forming an unbreakable barrier to survival. Miku screams and bashes her fists into their chest; she doesn't care if they're zombies or whatever the fucking shit they are, because she wants to live and she doesn't care about anything else not important to her. Hands shoot out and catch her arms with a vice-like grip, and Miku struggles valiantly, determined not to go down without a fight, a chance to continue existing on this dratted planet.

She's caught by total surprise when the hands swerve her around and shove her out of her room, into the snow-white living room. "Go!" Her mother urges her, while her father holds back the growling and shrieking and clawing zombie. They're full of zombie-inflicted wounds already, their skin turning pale green, lips curling back to reveal slowly rotting teeth, pupils abnormal, and yet they still stand, protecting Miku from the zombie. She wavers.

"Go already, Miku! This was a really bad idea after all, wasn't it, dear?" Her mother barks at both Miku and her father, who nods, and the middle-aged woman wrinkles her nose as nonsensical words start spurting out of her mouth. Shocked by the turn of events, Miku silences the shadow of doubt in her heart and turns heartlessly away, face cool and collected, though her head is buzzing with the abnormality of the situation. What did her mother mean by 'a really bad idea'? Shaking her head, the girl sprints to the door in record time. As soon as she's out of the damned house, she looks over her shoulder and screams, finding _three fucking zombies _chasing after her now, her legs carrying her even faster now, reaching the lifts in the middle of the corridor.

Jabbing her finger at the lift button, Miku's dismayed to find one of them under maintenance and the other all the way at ground floor. "Fuck," she curses, turning to the stairwell, but finds it blocked by one of the zombies, previously known as 'her mother', who happened to be picking away disinterestedly at the paint, growling all the time. The other two — 'Father' and 'Mikuo' — corner her to the small balcony at the end of the corridor, wind whipping her twin-tailed hair everywhere. Pushing strands of hair out of her face, Miku backs off nervously from the snarling zombies, her back hitting the railings and she almost falls over, if not for the fact that she regained her footing in the nick of time.

Miku looks over the railing into the ground far below, and gulps, finding the twelve-story drop too dangerous and impossible to even think about it. She continues to flatten herself against the railings, trying to dodge the searching fingers of the zombies that scratch dangerously close to her face. It's a last resort, Miku tells herself. She really doesn't want to be eaten of her brains, or be turned into a freaking ugly zombie. _Looks like we're back to Choices A and B. Ahhhh how bothersome that there's no Choice C this time 'round. _

The alarm clock on her hand rings shrilly all of a sudden, and the zombies' attention snap to it, disgustingly bulging eyes focused on the ringing mechanism, and Miku lets her eyes wander to the face, too. It reads one-thirteen. She mentally translates it into an unlucky number — thirteen-thirteen, and snorts at the whole irony of this shit. Unlucky number for someone as unlucky as her to be trapped unluckily by zombies. _Zombies who have green liquid-shit-thing dribbling down their throats from bite wounds. _

She's forced further back, and Miku hoists herself up to sit on the railing, nervously looking out of a corner of her eye at the empty space outside. Then a zombie lunges for her, and screaming, she instinctively moves back, and falls into air. She grapples for something to hold onto, _anything, something! _Then she's reminded that she's falling.

The azure blue of the skies blind her, but at least she's not within reach of those snarling zombies anymore (which were currently groaning and moaning, hands reaching out for her), and Miku closes her eyes.

**Time: 1313**

**Status of Hatsune Miku: Alive and falling**

* * *

**…..I hope you guys didn't have any ****information-overload or whatever. This is pretty long, after all. **

**Been busy lately. (Actually skipping out on homework cough cough) **

**I'm trying to get back to writing my other overdue stories, but things don't go well when you've been disabled from writing for a long time and feeling lazy. **

**And my friend and I are writing a collab! Which uh, takes around six months to write one chapter. *looks away***

**Nya!**


	2. Checkpoint 2

**So uh, my plan is to update this story regularly, write more one-shots, and put all my other stories on a hiatus because I don't have the inspiration to write for them.**

**Don't kill me! *hugs myself***

* * *

This fall's taking too damn long. Air zips past her as Miku tries to pry her eyes open against the wind's force. She just wants to meet the damn ground and splat dead, and apparently life's not letting her. Oh the goodness of it. She finally gets her eyelids to slide open and widens them as she nearly crashes face first into a random building that popped up of nowhere. "What. The. Fuck." The girl curses as she stares — glares — at the blank brick wall, as if it will give her an answer as to how exactly did she progress from falling to the ground to flying into a building.

Ha, fat chance it's going to answer her. A wall's an inanimate object, for goodness' sake! What exactly is she thinking?!

It's then that Miku realizes she's five feet above the ground, the wind blowing and whipping and embracing her, her feet standing — no, floating — above nothing. Absolutely nothing. "OH MY GOD WHAT THE HECK WHAT THE HECK WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT MACARONI WHAT—" Curse words spills out of the girl's mouth as she screams shrilly, failing her arms around in panic, and the idea of her _floating and flying _registers and clicks in her brain like the final piece of a confusing puzzle. Then that damned pop-up and her precious, precious, laptop flashes by in her brain, teasing _come and get me and you'll get your answer _and Miku chases.

The answer's so close within her reach, so close, but she can't get it! It always seems to run ahead of her! It's so annoying that she's never been fit. But wait! She can't grasp hold of it; it's slipping through her fingers like sand and — _no! _She's got the coattails; she's got the parts and pieces of the answer. It all comes from the pop-up, even though that possibility makes Miku laugh out incredulously. It's impossible. How can just some shitty pop-up and her shitty answer bring her this ability? While this whole...zombie and the undead stuff are going on, too.

They're probably linked, Miku decides, and she has half a mind to go marching up to the nearest zombie and rattle the shitty answer out of that disgusting creature. Except that won't work, because for some reason, she is five feet above ground with no idea how to maneuver her body and this strange ability. It's annoying.

Miku continues to glare at the wall in front of her. It doesn't help her situation at all, but she still does it for a while (okay, maybe not just a while). She's crazy after all — heck, her oh-so-dear parents even sent her to the mental hospital for a month! The girl lets out a short bark of laughter, throwing her head back. It's a bad move, for she finds herself zooming suddenly to the ground _for no freaking reason at all what the heck is going on here just stop you stupid body effing stop—_

Her body jerks to a stop, and Miku is relieved — sort of, kind of — to find that she can at least touch the ground with her feet. Bare feet. The girl huffs, shrugging as if without a care in the world — because really, she doesn't have a care in the world at all. If this can even be called a world anymore. Zombies are roaming everywhere, as far as her eyes can see while in the air — groaning and drooling and _disgusting _creatures. There had been a woman, who, even with a knife, couldn't fend off a horde of zombies, and died under their hands. Literally. She had been pathetically ripped to shreds, screaming all the while, attracted more zombies, died, and reborn as one of the living dead.

Miku shrugs, impassive about the woman's death and 'rebirth'. In this world, it's the strong that survive on the weak after all. She'd learnt that from the many games stored in her precocious laptop. The moment both her feet touch the blood-crusted ground, a strange lightness in her body suddenly vanishes, and the tealette finds her frail frame heavily bogged down by days of inactivity and sleeplessness. Her body feels heavy with sleep, screaming and begging her to lie down and fall asleep and _just give up on the world already..._the offer is so tempting, so delicious, that Miku almost reaches out for the sinful apple and takes a bite, but she stops herself forcefully.

_She will not die. She will survive._ She tells herself this many times over, afraid that one day, she really decides to go to sleep forever. Miku snorts quietly, full of contempt and hatred for herself. Just days before, she had entertained the thought of slitting her wrist deep enough to let her get to a high she can't ever come down from, and now, she was — is — begging the gods to let her survive through this ordeal.

Miku steels herself. She will not beg another being for her survival; she will depend on herself, depend on no one else, for her survival. After all, everyone and anyone she could minutely count on are dead. To be more precise, they're being undead creatures. She will not find a group of survivors and beg and depend on them to keep her alive — they might just backstab her and abandon her when they're in an emergency — Miku begs to differ. Even though she was weak and alone and an anti-social maniac and a _girl _(but oh, Miku had no idea why women suffered prejudice), she had to survive.

She is surviving. She will survive. She _must _survive.

All for the sake of her laptop.

Miku decides that once she gets out of this thing, once this whole shit is over, she will get a new laptop — the brand new kind that just came up on the market. The one that allows users actually _dive _into the virtual world and surf the Internet from there. How fast technology progresses! Just fifty years or so ago, they were still depending on tablets. And now, and now! She lets a small laugh humorlessly again. And now, technology was being used against the humans. Very clearly, all of this shit had been caused by messing around with nature, and now what? They were dragging the innocents into deep shit.

Fuck all this.

The girl takes big steps towards the nearest cover she can find — a small store selling groceries and daily amenities. She stops at the door, listening acutely for any signs of zombies, before peeking in cautiously. All clear so far. Taking a crowbar leaning against the side of the counter for safety's sake and ignoring the dead cashier, she strolls and patrols the rows and rows of goods — at least she wouldn't go hungry for a while — searching for _unwanted visitors._ There's none. Miku briefly considers the cashier back there at the front, but decides that the man is truly and really dead. He's not moving. There's no sign of him turning into a zombie.

A low growl catches Miku's attention. A zombie has stuck its head in through the door, and shuffles in, ignoring the cashier. She tilts her head, debating whether to go for it, but then the wind that zips through the door blows at the wind chimes hanging near her, and a musical tinkling that slices through the silence captures both Miku's and the creature's attention. Hell descends, as it ambles at an unnatural speed towards her, clearly attracted by the sound, and the girl grits her teeth as she swings up the crowbar with difficulty and smashes it down on the zombie's head.

The head caves in and its juices spurt out and splatters on the whitewash wall and her hoodie, and one of its eyeballs squirt out with a small 'pop' — something Miku watches in sick fascination, but the zombie continues reaching out for her with scabbing arms. Stupid thing. The tealette groans in annoyance and pain, dragging the crowbar up and another hit of the metal object does it in for good. Her arms ache and her muscles protest. Just a single movement of her arms hurt like hell, and the girl winces. She'd been spending day after day, heck, month after month at the laptop, typing away, after all. It was no surprise that she couldn't last for long.

Her eyes zoom to the door. She better lock it soon, but that would mean that her only mean of escape if something bad happening _inside _the store was sealed off as well. Groaning, the girl moves to sidestep the corpse of the thing, and walks to the door carefully, ears on the alert for any unnatural sounds. The door creaks loudly as it closes, and Miku winces, willing her arms to move faster, to push harder as zombies lumber towards the store, attracted by the creak that breaks through the silence of the neighborhood.

The door slams in the face and hands of the first zombie that manages to get its green fingers latched on the doorframe, and Miku stares at the slimy juice that dribbles down the broken digits. It's strangely fascinating, how the blood in humans has transformed into strange green liquid in zombies. She wonders briefly if this is a natural thing, but snaps her attention back to the door just as it opens, pushed by the sheer force of zombie bodies ramming and depending on it. The girl forces all her strength on her back, as she rams against the damned door with her back. It works a bit, and the door inches shut against the masses of bodies out there — Miku knows it will not hold for long. She needs to lock the door fast, and she reaches for the lock under he door knob — nearly there, just a bit more!

Her sweaty fingers flip the latch, and Miku heaves a sigh of relief and slides down to sit on the floor as the door clicks shut, the bolt sliding into place. For good measure, the girl also shoves the crowbar between the small space between the bottom of the wooden door and the floor, for it to act as a stopper. She barely manages to get one of the shelves to block the door, and nods at her handiwork. This will have to do for now.

Her body can't handle any more pressure. Her muscles are aching and numb already, and Miku can barely fight off the black dots invading her vision. But she still has work to do. The girl moves to the back of the store, and grins in half relief as she spies an emergency escape. She rattles the handle, and is pleased to find that it is locked. For now. At least zombies won't invade her hiding-hole while she is unaware. And at least she has another mean of escaping if anything happened, though Miku has no idea where this emergency escape would bring her. She isn't familiar with the neighborhood — a lot has changed since she last stepped out of the house. The girl laughs softly at how _ancient_ she must be now — and to think that just a few years ago, she was the one who knew each and every happening around in the flats! She'd sure changed.

Though, it is common knowledge that people changes after time, so she really can't be blamed. She's simply..._living up _to that belief. There's nothing wrong about that, isn't there? Miku flops down on a mountain of blankets on display, and lies back, sinking into the fluffy goodness. How many days has it been since she last slept? One? Two? No...it might have been a week. She rolls on her side, finding that even though she is _so tired, so sick _of this world, she can't fall asleep. She simply can't. She can't drop into a deep sleep and _forget everything_, everything that has happened, no matter how much she wants to, no matter how much she wishes to.

Life sucked.

* * *

She wakes up to the bright rays of sunshine and rolls over to the shade to shield her eyes from the _damned sun. _What the heck is wrong with that bright ball of fire, anyways?! Why does it even shine on the Earth, when no one really appreciates the damned shit it has done? It should just rot away, since no one really takes notice of it anyway. They all ignore it, take its existence for granted, so it _should just fly off to some random place or something _and see how the humans take its absence. That's what Miku would do, anyway.

She over-rolls and thumps on the ground very un-ladylike. Oh, how her _dead _mother-turned-zombie would protest at her action and scream at her for being _a nuisance, a disgrace to their family, a good-for-nothing. _But she's not here. She's not here anymore. She's one of the undead, one of those disgusting _things, _walking around looking for humans and brains to eat, a carnivore, a zombie cannibal, a..._murderer. _Miku smirks, covering her face with her still-sore arm. Who's the nuisance now? Who's the disgrace now? Who's the good-for-nothing now?

Definitely not her.

A low growl from her stomach captures her attention. From the looks of the sun, it must be nearly midday now, so Miku hasn't eaten anything for a day. The girl shrugs. She has gone hungry for several days before, so this is nothing new to her. That was before, though — the situation has changed. The girl sighs, and heads to the shelves containing canned food, picking up some candy on the way there. The sight of sardines and mackerel and beans in tomato sauce irks the girl, and she very nearly pukes up the grape-flavored sweet. She hates canned food, Miku reminds herself, nose wrinkling in disgust.

She sifts through the shelves, trying hard not to vomit at the sight of all that _disgusting _food. Coming out victorious from the torturous battle with a can of mushrooms, a plastic spoon and a can opener she found at the back of the store, Miku slumps down on the mountain of soft cotton and polyester and wrenches the damn tin open, wondering how the heck she can eat this...thing without doubting that it's poison, without proof that she won't die from damn fungus poisoning. She's insecure, she admits grudgingly, tilting her head back to allow the mushroom broth better access down her throat. Everyone is, after all. She is simply following majority — birds of a feather flock together, no?

Miku snorts in contempt. Really, she doesn't agree with that sentence at all. Sure, it might be correct figuratively, but not literally. Peacocks don't do that, after all. She stabs the remaining mushroom left in the can viciously with her spoon, not even flinching when the plastic snaps and breaks, and shoves it in her mouth, and the coppery tang of blood bursts out on her taste buds as the cut edges scratch against her tongue.

She ignores it.

The can she throws over her head hits something with a sick squelch, and with a flinch, Miku remembers that the body is still there. She has to do something about it, she decides, or else the body will rot, and when bodies rot, they stink. Like hell. And she certainly doesn't want it in her hidy-hole. The girl walks casually over to the body, kneeling down beside the head to inspect it. Miku bites back a smirk as she stares at the caved-in skull, the sunken cheekbones, the empty eye socket, the sharp canines, the broken neck...Her handiwork. Not the zombie part, of course, even though she certainly feels like applauding the creator of this repulsive creature for the wonderful design. The green blood-liquid-thing pools at the back of the body, translucent and disgustingly sticky on her fingers. Miku regrets dipping her index finger into that pool of blood — now she had to find somewhere to wash it off. Her eyes travel to the small refrigerators lining the wall of the convenience store and smirks, pulling open the door of one and taking out one slightly warm bottle of beer.

It's not like she drinks it anyway, so no one is going to mind, no one is going to chide her for wasting beer or whatever the shit to wash her hand. There's no one around.

A dark smirk carves its way onto the girl's lips.

* * *

The woman in the lab coat huffs tiredly, hands clutching at a damn knife wound on her left arm. At least it's on her _left, _not right, and she can imagine how disastrous it would be if she, a right-handed, was disposed of her limb. Ugh. She ignores the horror and bile that threatens to spill, pushing forward in the seemingly-never ending corridor, blood slowly dripping and sliding down her arm and onto the metal floor. Small puddles of the red liquid form whenever the woman leans against the wall to take a rest, breathes shortening and increasing in frequency now.

She has to find somewhere to rest properly and bandage up her wound — no matter how bad the bandage is. That knife has probably cut an important vein in her arm (the basilica vein, maybe) since blood's flowing out of the wound at such a fast rate. At least it isn't a gun. The woman dislikes reaching into her wound to get that stinking bullet out of her flesh — it always hurt and is disgusting to see her own fingers drenched in her own blood, and she has no antiseptic either way. She huffs, blowing at her long bangs to keep it out of her sweaty face. Curse that two who landed her in such a pitiable state.

They had come to her, lips speaking of sweet promises and nothings, and damn the teenage her, she actually fell deep into their carefully laid trap, like she was the rabbit and they the hunter. How could she have been so blind as to actually believe their pathetic lies? A few times she came close to uncovering the truth, and yet she pushed it away with her own hands, rather believing in _their darned words. _Sugar-coated, they were, and she, the innocent, gullible she, actually took the bait, took the sweet treat willingly.

And now she's reaping what she sow. Those two actually managed to activate the damned thing — she has, no, had the ability to stop them at first! And she merely stood there, letting the feeling of betrayal and worriedness wash over her like a-a small wave. And they knifed her! They knifed her after they had done it all, released hell upon the people of the world, saying rubbish like _we don't need you anymore, you're useless, you know? _

Damn it all.

* * *

**Time: 1147**

**Status of Hatsune Miku: Alive**

**Survival Time left: 12 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes (+ 10 days) **

**Congratulations! As a bonus for staying alive for so long, you have been awarded an extra 10 days to survive and find your way out of this blasted reality. We wish you all the best, and may Lady Luck ever shine on you.**

* * *

**Yeah. This whole thing reminds me a lot of SAO. **


End file.
